Tuesday, February 8, 2011

DimDim, a software company that provides a web-based platform for real-time, rich-media collaboration and meetings, was acquired recently by Salesforce.com. Dimdim provides free web conferencing service where users can share desktops, show slides, collaborate, chat, talk and broadcast via webcam.

According to the Salesforce.com announcement, DimDim was acquired for $31 million US on Jan 6th 2011. Marc Benioff, chairman and CEO, salesforce.com proclaimed:

“The acquisition of Dimdim will help salesforce.com deliver to the enterprise the same integrated collaboration and communication experience that made Facebook the world’s most popular Internet site.”

4 comments:

Is Dim Dim FIPS 140-2 Certified? If so, that would be great! As a Video Conferencing Consultant, I can tell you that there are many new web-based tools available today. What this means is that employees can utilize their existing laptop/desktop, and by adding a simple webcam, they have created a highly sophisticated virtual workstation.

Now, many of these web-based systems "claim" that they can provide true end to end security, but when you "scratch below the surface" you see that they only provide security at the application level.

How do you know which systems are the most secure? For starters, the U.S. Federal Government has set forth some very strict standards for the assurance of true end-to-end security in the form of their NIST FIPS 140-2 Certification list. There are currently four (4) vendors who have met these standards, and one (1) of them is web-based.

With this, for less than $30.00 per month you can now expect features like: 1) UNLIMITED meetings at a single monthly cost; 2) HD video/CD quality audio; 3) Desktop sharing; 4) Unlimited recording and playback of meetings at no additional charge; 5) SECURE instant messaging; 6) Whiteboarding; 7) Voting/Polling; and 8) Workspaces (which also must be SECURE) which allow team members to securely view and post information, share files and documents, maintain version control, organize meetings, post discussions and get work done regardless of their geographic location.

Again, all of these features should be available with no additional hardware required, except for a simple webcam, and provided to you in a single download.

I believe DimDim is not FIPS 140-2 Certified at this current stage. As part of the Salesforce.com acquisition though you may find the product will mature into a more Enterprise ready offering.

Ive been following DimDim for a number of years and it has yet to fully mature. The latest offerings prior to the acquisition were still poorly coded and contained a large number of bugs. Hopefully the Salesforce.com team, who have done brilliantly with their own product, can leverage their experience and improve the offering.

With the expertise for generating web conferencing application now being available to numerous application manufacturers from around the globe and because there's now more web conferencing application solutions than they can count, it's become important to know how to set them apart and which factors need to be thought about when choosing a web conferencing solution.

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I am an IT Engineer with more than 15 years experience in the field. I have worked for large multinational companies including a few Fortune 100 at System Admin level up to CIO in recent times. Currently developing a Play! Web Application based SCADA app for the mining sector.